KIN (2006—2013)

South Africa is such a fractured, schizophrenic, wounded and problematic place. It is a very violent society; the scars of colonialism and apartheid still run deep. Issues of race and cultural custodianship permeate every aspect of society, and the legacy of forced racial segregation casts a long shadow. How does one live in this society? How does one take responsibility for history, and to what extent should one try? How do you raise a family in such a conflicted society? Before getting married and having children, these questions did not trouble me; now, they are more confusing.

About eight years ago, I started photographing the notion of ‘home’, whatever that might mean, as both intimate and public place. To look at home critically is to look at one’s self and one’s fellow man. It is to feel the weight of history and to consider the space one occupies in it. It is to consider one’s relationship with ‘kin’ – to look at the tenuous ties that bind us to, and repel us from, each other. Home is where belonging and alienation coexist.

Does this belonging liberate or confine us? Does it tie us to the terrible weight of history or free us from it?

I have deeply mixed feelings about being here. Eight years on, I do not feel any more resolved about these issues. If anything, I am more confused and more at odds with my ‘home’. This work grapples with these dilemmas, but ultimately fails to provide any answers.